As the Climate Changes, Voters Go for Coal

It was just two days ago that a United Nations panel on climate change issued a frightening warning about the dangers of global warming.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue, “they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger,” as the New York Times article explained, threatening food shortages, widespread flooding, and mass extinction of animal and plant species.

But tonight, two of the states with particularly long histories of poverty and hunger ignored that warning and voted for Senate candidates who have vowed to fight limits on coal burning with everything they have. Kentucky re-elected Senator Mitch McConnell, who has a strong chance of achieving his goal of becoming majority leader, and West Virginia elected Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a founder of the Congressional Coal Caucus.
Ms. Capito has at various times denied that the climate is changing, and has demanded that President Obama stop trying to win a global reduction in carbon emissions. Mr. McConnell has vowed to stand in the way of the president’s plans to limit emissions from coal plants. (Mr. McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, has also been critical of coal regulation, but at least has had the decency to acknowledge the reality of climate change.)

The self-interest of voters in coal country was evident tonight, providing the strongest support for the two Republicans. Rand Paul, the other senator from Kentucky, said the results send a clear message: “Mr. President, the war on Kentucky coal must end.” Joe Manchin, the state’s remaining Democratic senator, said his party lost those two races solely because of the administration’s coal policy.

It’s unfortunate that the voters in those two states can’t see the larger picture. But it’s worse that the leaders they support have encouraged this blindness, refusing to acknowledge the looming danger to the environment as they accumulate power.